Since Fergie's retirement, we have been struggling to find an appropriate manager who could lead us to glory. Moyes, van Gaal and Mourinho all had a period of good time here, but eventually people only remember their poor run of form which led to their sacking. Now that they'd been all gone, I think it's time to give them a fair evaluation. Here, I'm trying to assess their overall performance at United and measure their long term impact to the club retrospectively.
David Moyes - The Chosen One
It's actually kind of funny to say Moyes was "the chosen one", given that multiple reports suggested he wasn't the first choice. He took charge in summer 2013 and the decision to get rid of all the coaching staffs was quite a debate. People argued that original coaching staffs like Phelan could be useful to the team, but it's also common for a manager to bring in his own team. He had to work with the inexperienced Woodward in the transfer windows, which were widely considered as a failure but in fact Fellaini and Mata were proven to be useful to the following managers, at least as a squad player.
Moyes started the season with a 4:1 victory against Swansea, but then we lost to Liverpool, City and West Brom. After that we had interchanging periods of bad (late November to early December) and good (Christmas) times, and we were consistent in the 6th to 7th position. He was sacked after the defeat to Everton, which confirmed that we lost our Champions League spot. Nonetheless, we finished with 64 points, which were similar to many post-Fergie seasons besides the 81 points we got in 17/18.
Being the immediate successor of Fergie, he was under a great deal of pressure, and many of the criticisms were unwarranted and unreasonable. For example, people put all the blame on him for the downfall of the club, without acknowledging the limitaiton of the squad and the decline of our key players; people teased him for crossing from time to time, but it'd been one of the major tactics we used down the years. He cleared the deadwoods like Vidic, Ferdinand and Evra but few mentioned because they were legends to the club.
I feel for him in many ways.
Louis van Gaal - The Disastrous One
Following Dutch's success in the 2014 World Cup, many United fans had high hopes in van Gaal. However, things didn't go as smoothly as expected and we only claimed 5 points in the first 5 games. He seemed to adopt the "trial and error" policy and struggled to find a consistent formation throughout the season. We were heavily dependent on individual brilliance from Martial, Smalling and de Gea. We got more points from stronger sides but we also lost more points to the weaker sides as compared to the previous season.
van Gaal slammed United for failing to buy his transfer targets a few days ago, despite he spent almost 300m on a series of flops. The likes of Blind and Darmian never looked suitable to the Premier League, while the recruitment of Falcao, Schweinsteiger and Valdes were clueless. Depay and Schneiderlin didn't have the required quality. di Maria was one of the few top class players we had bought in recent years, but he had a fallout with him forcing him to leave.
The most disastrous thing about van Gaal, however, was his youth policy. He kept the squad really small claiming to develop youngsters, but what he's actually doing was just handing debuts to a pile of immature players. He had no idea about who had the higher potential, so he just handed debuts to all of them and hoped they'd success one day despite they're not ready. On the RB he tried Varela, McNair, Janko, Love, Riley and Fosu-Mensah, a total of 6 options in the same position. He dropped McNair after calling him our RB for the next 10 years.
Many credited van Gaal for Rashford's breakthrough, but it's no more than a coincidence as he originally wanted Wilson as our backup striker. He destroyed the career of many youngsters, and he did more harm than good by keeping the squad thin. We were deficient in quantity let alone quality in many positions, and we lacked players who were in their prime years. This made the job impossible for whoever was taking over and picking up the mess for him.
Jose Mourinho - The Special One
Considering the mess left by van Gaal, Mourinho did a pretty good job in his first season at United. Pogba, Ibrahimovic and Bailly all provided instant impacts to the team, while only Mkhitaryan struggled. His ability in big match preparation brought us 3 titles (including the Community Shield) in a season, which was pretty rare in the post-Fergie era. We also improved in the league in terms of points, goals for and against. However, Ibrahimovic's cruiciate ligmanet injury late in the season provided uncertainty to the team.
Going into the second season, Mourinho introduced Lindelof, Matic as an upgrade to Herrera, and Lukaku as a replacement for Ibrahimovic. These signings were questionable to say the least. On one hand we finished 2nd in the league with 81 points only behind the unplayable City team, but on the other hand we were disappointing in the cup games. We were knocked out by Sevilla and Bristol City in the Champions League and EFL Cup respectively.
In the third season things got out of control. The saga between Mourinho and Pogba was hugely intensified by the media especially when the team wasn't performing. The frequent switch in formation indicated that things didn't go as planned and Mourinho needed some desperate moves to rescue his job. Nonetheless, we still failed to register a win against the rest of the big 6 and the defeat to Liverpool got him sacked in December.
| Tactic | Result | Transfer | Youth | Man Management | Heritage | Rank |
---|
Moyes | B- | C | B- | C+ | C- | B | 2 |
van Gaal | C | C+ | C- | D | D | D | 3 |
Mourinho | B- | B | C+ | C+ | D+ | C+ | 1 |